The Stupid Disease
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Jin is not good at communicating his feelings.


**Title: **The Stupid Disease  
**Universe:** Love Mode  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG-15  
**Character/Pairing/s:** JinxKatsuki, Kiichi   
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Um… clear spoilers for Vol 7?  
**Word Count:** 2,162  
**Summary:** Jin is not good at communicating his feelings.  
**Dedication:** Ann? LOL I don't remember if you liked this pair or not.  
**A/N: **I'm sure this has been done a thousand times before, and in far better ways. But I was randomly flipping through my LM scans again and I reread Vol 7 for these two, because I remember them being so hysterically retarded the first time around. Still got the same feeling the second time around, to be honest. XD This is probably OOC to the max even still though. But it was pretty fun to write after all the headache of finishing my script. XD  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

Everyone who knows Kuniaki Jin also knows that he isn't very good at conveying his feelings in positive ways.

But rather than bottle his emotions up, he does let them out regularly, if only because he knows it would be imprudent to do otherwise.

He just can't do it _positively._

So he chooses to communicate his emotions in horrible, malicious, and oftentimes cruel ways instead.

When he's up to it, he can even go so far as to be petty as well.

And he's been like this for so long now that it's the only clue that any of the Blue Boy's senior staff needs in order to figure out that Jin really is, at the very least, quite fond of Katsuki Kyousuke.

Because every time the young page has stormed into work sulking, ranting, punching his fist into the walls and/or outright crying about what an insensitive jerk Kuniaki is, the very first thing that that anyone ever thinks is: "_Damn, but Jin must really have it bad this time."_

Because those who know Kuniaki Jin also know that the exact measure of how much he likes a person is directly proportional to how much shit he gives them.

And while he tries to play it off cool—"_I'm a man who can't fall in love_"—and while he sits there smirking and smoking and generally playing the role of aloof bastard very well, everyone who has been around him and who has worked closely with him during his time in the Blue Boy's employ also knows to just roll their eyes at Jin whenever he does those things now, to just ignore him whenever those very familiar words come out of Kuniaki's nastily leering mouth.

It's the same old song and dance and they know all the steps by heart already.

So no one really believes him when he tries to convince them he's a completely unfeeling, though truth be told, they're too lazy to say anything out loud to him about it given the fact that that would just give Jin cause to actually try and be an even bigger bastard, just to prove them wrong (right).

Kiichi calls this type of behavior twelve-year-old-boy-trapped-in-a-grown-man's-body-syndrome and unfortunately, says that the cure for such a disease is rare to the point of being near impossible to find.

After he says that though, he also feels the need to emphasize the fact that in Reiji's case they had been lucky— miraculously lucky— and as such, no one should take Owner's case of the disease and the cure they found for him as a representative sample of how most of these stories ultimately turn out.

Reiji, Kiichi says, just so happens to have been a very special case.

While Jin on the other hand, is most likely going to have to live with his illness for the rest of his life.

So knowing this, those who work at the Blue Boy simply tend to indulge Kuniaki in his bouts of "I'm too cool for you," and do their jobs, sometimes pausing to pat a distraught Katsuki on the back when they pass him in the halls, telling the young page to hang in there because Jin really, really seems to like him.

Kiichi suggests to him one day—after another hole has been punched in the wall and is once again, coming out of Katsuki's paycheck—that while the younger man might not be the cure per se, he's definitely the only medication Jin has thus far responded so positively to over all the years the elder Aoe has known Kuniaki.

"To be honest, I don't understand a word you're saying, sensei," Katsuki admits as he lets Kiichi continue to smile at him enigmatically while he ices and wraps the younger man's bruised hand for him.

"Give it time and you'll see," Kiichi tells him once he's finished, just as cryptically as ever.

Katsuki kind of wishes people would stop saying things like that and maybe let him in on this super-secret code that he's apparently missing out on with regards to Jin's behavior, because he's not sure how the asshole constantly telling him he looks like a dressed-up tramp on his best days and a kitschy poser on his worst ones means that the other man likes him any.

But he supposes it's all ultimately his own stupid fault anyway, and as such, he can't count on others to figure his problems out for him. _He'_s the one who fell in love with the asshole in the first place, after all.

"Just give it time," Kiichi repeats over and over again, like somehow time will change everything that is wrong with Jin (or Katsuki, depending on how you look at things).

The words of comfort feel pretty hollow to Katsuki all things considered, but oddly enough, even if he doesn't actually believe any of what Kiichi says—even for even a second— he knows he's in love enough that he's willing to _hope_ all the same. Or at the very least, endure.

Even if Jin is the biggest jerk on the face of the planet and Katsuki is pretty damn certain no amount of time will _ever_ be able to cure that, disease or no.

But as all Blue Boy employees eventually do, Katsuki begins to realize—with time— that sensei seems to be right about just about everything.

Because after some months of working near or around Jin, Katsuki starts to notice that while the older man will say all manner of demeaning and hurtful things about Katsuki right to his face, the guests who do the same to him never seem to make any return visits to the club.

And Katsuki is pretty sure that the man who had accosted him rather ardently while insisting on a "fair price" last week was last seen being escorted off of the premises by a stern-faced Kashima, all while nursing a black-eye and a broken arm.

The instances don't end there either, and when Katsuki stops to think about it—when he pays attention to his surroundings and not just to what an asshole his lover is—he realizes that with time, he is learning to decipher the ways in which Kuniaki Jin—jerk extraordinaire— communicates his affections.

By causing the rampant pain and mortification of other human beings in direct proportion to how much he likes Katsuki.

So when a top host who had sneered at Katsuki (and called him a "mongrel trying to ape a gentleman") mysteriously finds half of his clientele whisked away by a pair of up-and-comers under Jin's tutelage some weeks later, Katsuki thinks it might be a compliment or some sort. Or at the very least, a defense.

And while Jin flirts openly with a lot of the Blue Boy's most coveted escorts (always succeeding in pissing Katsuki off to no end), when one of those boys seriously tries to sleep with Jin one evening, he gets laughed at so condescendingly that the poor man is seen running—crying hysterically—from the room moments later. Katsuki thinks then, that the fact that Jin demands to fuck him at least twice a week might mean something, at least in that context.

As time passes all these little clues build on top of one another and start to make a bigger picture for the young page, start to tell him what it is, exactly, Jin is trying to convey to him despite his so-called illness (whether he knows he's doing it or not).

When all of Katsuki's massage appointments slowly trickle into nothing over the course of a year, he flatters himself to believe that maybe it is Jin's way of saying: "_I don't want your hands on anyone else, professionally or not." _

And on the rare occasions when he _is_ asked to entertain a guest in the lounge; the piano player always seems to be on shift as well (if twitchier than normal), even if the meeting is scheduled during the non-peak hours when the musicians aren't even supposed to be there in the first place. And Katsuki thinks that maybe it's Jin's way of saying something like: _"I just want to keep you safe." _

Even Owner begins to give up on yelling at Katsuki every time he happens to punch a new hole in the drywall (though admittedly Jin isn't the cause so much anymore), and instead, only ends up sighing at Katsuki. "Just be more careful next time, please," Aoe-san tells him dismissively, and rubs his temples as Katsuki bows and scrapes gratefully out of the office.

Whenever that happens, Katsuki thinks it means: _"Only I can yell at him, boss." _

Along with that, as he begins to figure Jin out—that is, when he begins to figure out Jerk Speak— Katsuki also learns to cry about it a whole lot less.

Which of course, just gives Jin cause to try harder, to be meaner, and as he does, _to maybe suggest that he really, really likes Katsuki a lot, for all the effort he is putting in._

Katsuki is even beginning to think that it's all unbelievably cute. Every insult, every growled curse, every steely, cold look and every single sly, condescending smirk is starting to look more and more endearing. Like a little kid pulling the pigtails of the girl he likes because it's the only thing he can think of to do to get her attention.

One day, when Jin passes him in the hall and leads with a customary, "You look like a complete mess," Katsuki finds it so adorable that he's only able to grin and wink in response.

"I haven't had time to fix myself up after the last guest," he suggests with a little laugh, straightening his tie in one smooth motion before moving on. "Now if you'll excuse me…there's so much to do today."

He continues down the hall.

Jin stares after him, and for once, has absolutely nothing else to say.

He's so tickled by Jin's behavior that as he turns the next corner on the way to his first assignment, he nearly runs right into Aoe Kiichi. "Oh, excuse me, sensei!" he apologizes, happily. "I wasn't paying attention to where I was going at all."

Kiichi sees his grin and it only takes a second of looking before the older man apparently knows everything that's going on to the smallest detail (he is scary like that sometimes).

And so the doctor reaches out and heartily clasps the young page on the shoulder before he can pass. "Not cured exactly, but it seems the symptoms are under control now, yes?" he asks amiably, and for once, Katsuki knows exactly what it is he's talking about.

"He'll never be cured," Katsuki suggests with a laugh before moving on, and everyone at the Blue Boy notices the slight bounce in the young page's step as he works through the rest of his shift that night.

The following day, when Katsuki mysteriously finds all of his afternoon appointments canceled at the last minute, he simply shakes his head and waits in the empty lounge with a few drinks, for once not feeling completely pole-axed at the sudden reversal of his fortune, the sudden dropping of his name from the schedule.

Because now he knows it doesn't mean _"You're not good enough_," so much as "_I want to see you… alone." _

Predictably, Jin storms into the lounge after him some time later, practically crackling energy as he stops to regard the younger man.

"Hey," Katsuki greets, and sips at his tumbler of scotch absently. "My day mysteriously freed up."

"Yeah," Jin growls, and swats the younger man's drink out of his hands before pulling him up by the lapels of his blazer.

Katsuki doesn't struggle under the roughness for once, only smiles and tips his head back accommodatingly as Jin's mouth descends on his, hard and demanding and maybe just a little bit frustrated on top of everything else.

"You're a damned annoying brat," the taller man hisses after a moment, though Katsuki knows not to listen to the words anymore. Jin has a horrible, incurable disease after all.

So instead, he just laughs gently and wraps an arm around the older man's throat, hoisting himself up onto his toes so that they're just about eye-to-eye. "I know," he says softly, and reaches down to unzip the big jerk's pants.

Jin smirks and says something predictably dirty, but from that point on, every petty, nasty, cruel thing that comes out of the other man's mouth only sounds like "_More_," to Katsuki anyway. The arms wrapped firmly around his waist bear him out.

And as they kiss, Katsuki can't help but think that for the two of them, the treatment is definitely a lot more fun than the cure anyway.

As it is, he might even start liking the disease a little bit, if it means Jin will always be this cute.

**END**


End file.
